


The First Step

by hystericalwomannovelist



Category: The Good Wife (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Just a little angst, TGF trailer scene extended, shh they'll be fine don't worry :)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-16 22:57:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9293321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hystericalwomannovelist/pseuds/hystericalwomannovelist
Summary: Diane pulls one glass out from the bar shelf and pours herself a drink, scotch neat. She pauses, then pulls out a second glass, goes ahead and pours another. She checks her watch, frowning. She takes a long drink.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A little expansion on the scenes from the TGF trailer, filled in with information gleaned from the TCA interviews from 1/9/17. All of this will be AU shortly, I'm sure!
> 
> Thanks to everytimeyougo for being as wonderful a beta as she is a writing partner! Almost all of this was conceived through our conversations picking apart every last detail in each clip, interview, and wild imagining we could lay our hands on. Thank you for helping me to clarify my thoughts and express them as well as I can. Also for teaching me everything I now know about accountancy. :)

Diane pulls one glass out from the bar shelf and pours herself a drink, scotch neat. She pauses, then pulls out a second glass, goes ahead and pours another. She checks her watch, frowning. She takes a long drink.

With both drinks in hand she strides into the living room, setting them side by side on the coffee table before going to check her appearance in the mirror on the far wall. She thinks twice and turns back, moving one glass to the smaller end table opposite, nearer the chairs.

The doorbell startles her out of wondering whether the dining room wouldn't be better after all. Rolling her eyes at herself, she crosses back toward the entryway, opening the door to find Kurt.

“Hello,” she says, expecting him but somehow still taken aback by the sight. After almost ten years in and out of her life, after all they've been through, seeing him again always catches her a little off guard.

“Hey,” he returns, his manner as unassuming as ever. But he doesn't quite meet her eye, and she knows he is every bit as tense and nervous as she is.

Perhaps not _quite_ as much. After all, he isn't the one who lost everything. Or perhaps more accurately, what losses he has suffered were of his own making.

But not all of them. Not the loss she needs to talk to him about tonight. On this, at least, they were on the same side.

Suddenly she realizes she has been standing there lost in thought a few moments too long and moves aside, opening the door to him. He enters, shrugging out of his coat and letting it drape over the banister. Her mouth curls into a half-smile, letting it go. Old habits die hard.

“Your hair's gotten long,” she says in what she hopes passes for a conversational tone, wincing as soon as she hears how far from the mark it landed. Why say that, of all things?

He chuckles, taking it in stride, or appearing to. “Thanks. You look good, too.”

“Not today,” she laughs in response, a bitter edge to hers. She gestures at the drinks as she leads him into the living room. “I hope you don't mind, I took the liberty.”

“Oh, no,” he says. If he thinks anything of her careful arrangement he doesn't let it show, taking his seat in one of the chairs.

She sits across from him on the sofa, watching him with disguised interest as he takes a sip and nods in appreciation. His hair _has_ gotten long; she isn't sure when she's seen it so. Come to think of it, he is looking thinner, too. She searches her memory for the last time she saw him. They had talked on the phone a couple weeks ago, a short but good talk after she had received his license renewal in the mail. But she hadn't _seen_ him since... god, not since that awful day after the inauguration when she told him she was going to Provence. She frowns, concerned he isn't taking very good care of himself.

“I'm sure you know why I asked you to come,” she says, setting aside those thoughts she hardly has a right to now. Wherever they end up, she finds it's always easier if she begins by coming straight to the point.

He scowls into his drink. “Rindell, I assumed.”

“Yes,” she sighs, her blood boiling anew at the mention of his name. “I had my accountant over last night – you remember Fred? I had almost forgotten – you lost 30 thousand you had invested with him, too.”

“I know.” He sighs, shrugging as if he had already written it off – furious about it, but powerless.

“I have the papers – you'll need them when the time comes. Or I can take care of all that for you, if you want.”

“We're not getting any of it back, are we?”

She takes in a deep breath and lets it out slowly, aware of how ragged it comes out, shoving the thought of her own millions away. “No.”

He makes a dismissive gesture with his hand in response, not unkind, but uninterested in getting mired in the details. As if to say: _It's over and done, then. Let it go._

His reaction doesn't surprise her, knowing him all too well. He would never give up fighting for what he could get back, but he would not waste an ounce of energy on what he could not.

She admires that about him, but finds she cannot just surrender – not in either case. Not yet.

“It's just gone, Kurt,” she says unnecessarily, lapsing into a long pause for want of the right words. “I'm so sorry.”

His face snaps back to attention at this, full of genuine confusion. “Why are you sorry?”

She isn't quite sure what she's apologizing for, and chasing the question is an angrier voice insisting the last thing she should do is apologize to him, not for this, not for anything. But in place of anything she might really want to say, she offers: “I don't think you ever wanted to do it, invest any of your money with him. I'm afraid I pressured you. You just wanted to make a good impression with my friends, or I suppose with me.”

He waves this away too, with a little grunt. It was just like him to decline to place blame on anyone's shoulders but his own.

“I guess it's lucky we never merged our financial lives any further than that,” she says as she takes another sip of her scotch, starting to feel its warmth spread through her body. “Or the rest of our lives.”

“Don't say that,” he says, and immediately looks away. She knows he is thinking he has no right to ask her not to wish away what they had shared. And he doesn't.

She still wishes she hadn't said it, either.

“Are you okay?” she asks suddenly, getting back to the subject at hand.

He nods slowly, his voice even. “I'm fine.”

She knows he isn't fine, she can plainly see he isn't fine, but she, for her own part, has no right to ask _that_.

“I mean... financially,” she clarifies, embarrassed to even speak in those terms.

“No, I'm okay. This is a loss, but I still teach. And I have other savings.”

She nods, satisfied with this. It's true, the money he made from the sale of his business alone should be enough to live on even if he lost everything else. But she would rather not think too long about that just now.

“If only I'd been smart enough to diversify,” she laughs, casting away the thought.

“Can I help you?” He leans forward, looking concerned. Then a weak smile crosses his face as he, too, hears how that sounds. “I mean financially.”

She returns his smile for a moment, but shakes her head and looks back into her drink. It would be awful to have to ask him. There's too much tied up in his offer. If they're ever going to entwine their lives again, it can't be because of this. And she isn't quite there yet, anyhow.

_Isn't she?_ The thought knocks her sideways, unprepared for it in this moment, though she has been steeling herself against it all day. What part of “all gone” does she not quite understand yet? Forget retirement; she isn't sure she will be able to make her mortgage payments within a few months.

She hears a hard breath come out of her throat, unexpected, startling even her. She leans forward, setting her drink down on the table, uncrossing her legs and trying to take a long breath in and out to settle herself. The very next breath comes out in a ragged sob.

“Diane?”

His voice sounds far away and the concern in it is more than she can process right now, swept up again by the anguish of it all: everything she had worked so hard to build, all of her dreams for the future, gone, gone gone...

“This was my life!” she cries out, doubling over in her grief. “It's gone.”

She feels the weight of him dropping to the cushion beside her, the light brushing of his knee against hers, his hand firm and comforting at her back. She flinches at the contact, letting out another explosive sob, and she can feel him hesitate, can almost hear him wondering if he has done the exact wrong thing. She doesn't have the words to tell him not to stop, but she is grateful he seems to know. For better or worse, he always seems to know.

Tentatively at first and then more surely, he rubs small circles into her back, giving her the space and the acceptance to let it all out. She had played this meeting out in her head several different ways, but she never would have expected to end up crying in his arms. But for all the things she had lost – her money, her dream for retirement, her faith in her own country – she is still in mourning for him, too.

Her breath hitches again at that thought and along with it comes a fresh stream of tears. The absurdity is not lost on her that he is here, right now, his physical presence the only thing stopping her from breaking down entirely, and at the same time he feels completely out of her reach.

She straightens her back, closing her eyes until the tears stop, working to regain control of her breath. His hand stills as she pulls herself together but he does not withdraw, waiting for some indication from her. Suddenly she feels the full weight of the last two days' events and of the hours she did not sleep the night before. After all the anger and displays of strength she had made to everyone else, he allowed her to finally shed the tears she had been holding back, and now she finds she has used up her last reserves of energy. She collapses against the sofa in complete exhaustion, trapping his arm behind her and pulling him back with her.

He adjusts into a more comfortable position by her side, moving his arm around her shoulder. She lets her head fall easily against him, fall so easily back into the familiar warmth and scent of him. God, _god,_ she has missed this. She could so easily forget it all. Or forgive it all. Or let go of it all, at last.

“I don't know what I'm going to do, Kurt,” she says softly.

“You'll figure it out. You'll come back swinging tomorrow and you'll be back on top in no time.” He squeezes her shoulder meaningfully, his voice full of a pride that makes her want to cry again. “You always do.”

“But to start all over again – at my age?”

“Hey,” he says gently, objecting to that.

“Well, I was ready for retirement, I wanted to–“ She stops herself short, realizing it's not the path to go down just now. She _was_ ready for a new chapter in her life. But it was a chapter she had planned to write without him.

“Sorry about France,” he says, his voice low and cracking. “I know you wanted to get away.”

She winces; she has hurt him. She wishes she had thought before saying it.

“I just wanted a change. It's been a dream of mine for years, you know that.”

“Yeah.”

He is covering it well, but she knows she has stepped onto yet another landmine there. Yes, she had talked to him many times about retiring in Provence. Except then, he had been a part of that dream.

And she did want to get away. He knows it, and she can't very well deny it now. Away from the aftermath of a draining and ultimately grotesque election, that was the official story. But more truthfully, from him. From this. From all thought of making a decision.

“I was going to come back,” she insists quietly. She would have decided eventually. She would have finally cleared her head there, understood what she really wanted, and then she would have come back, and then perhaps –

But she is here now. And so is he.

“Well, I'm sorry it happened like this. But I can't say I'm sorry I might be able to see you more often,” he confesses.

She laughs, turning her forehead against his shoulder for a moment. This certainly isn't going to make it any easier to sort things out. Still, now more than ever, this needs to go to the bottom of the list of problems she must solve.

She pulls away a bit, leaning directly against the couch, but still not shrugging off the arm around her. She sets her jaw: one step at a time.

“I suppose I'll go back to my firm tomorrow and tell the partners I want to stay,” she begins, finding her strength again. “I hadn't even unpacked yet after I moved out of my office; even David Lee won't have had a chance to redecorate. I'm sure he'll give me a hard time, but it's always a matter of finding the right means of persuasion with him. I'll call up all my clients, make sure they're still on board. And I'll figure out a plan – oh, I'll never have the comfortable retirement I wanted, but in three years, maybe five...”

She grimaces, the thought stopping her in her tracks. _Five years?_ And even then, what kind of life could she look forward to? She'll have to sell her home, she'll...

“If there's ever anything I can do to help, you can always call me. You know that, right?”

His strong, steady voice brings her out of her thoughts, spiraling rapidly toward a vision of destitution that she knows is just as unlikely as her dream of Provence. She will have to make peace with a reality that is someplace in between.

She turns to face him, finding him looking back at her with that silent, watchful intentness that always sent a jolt of electricity down her spine. And it does now.

“That's why I called you tonight,” she replies softly, the corners of her mouth quirking upward into a smile.

He laughs. “I thought you only called because your accountant told you to.”

She laughs too, her eyes really locking on his for the first time since he walked in her door. She could so easily fall right into them, and before she knows it she is, her eyes closing as she drifts too close to see his now, her forehead close enough to feel the warmth of his skin, she can hear, she can _feel_ his intake of breath –

“I can't –” she whispers, and she is free of his embrace and out of the room before she even knows what she has done.

She walks into the dining room, the sight of careful stacks of paperwork her accountant left the night before doing nothing to help her process what has just happened. She paces around the table, surveying the damage done and the damage she could do now. It is all she can do to resist the urge to scatter the papers in a whirlwind of her anger and her anguish toward the floor.

“Diane?”

He follows her in, as she knew he would. That ten-second head start was certainly not enough to clear her mind.

“I think it's best if you go,” she says, as calmly as she can manage. “Thank you for coming over, but I think we've said everything we need to for tonight.”

She catches a glimpse of his face, hurt and confused and afraid now to say or do the wrong thing, but not willing to leave and do nothing.

She turns away, unable to add this to the list of things she must deal with right now. She walks around to the other side of the table again, looking for the single folder labeled MCVEIGH, aware her hand is shaking as she reaches out for it.

“Diane, please, talk to me –“

“These are your papers,” she says, handing him the file. She can hear herself speaking too quickly now when she is doing everything she can to remain composed. “I suppose we should coordinate when the time comes, and Fred can take care of everything for you, it's no problem. But you should look it over.”

He takes the file, but does not move.

“I didn't sleep last night, I think I'd better just--” She sighs, stopping, knowing exactly how absurd and transparent she sounds. But she needs him to go. She needs to stop wanting him to stay.

“I'm sorry,” he says softly. “You're right. I should let you get some rest.”

He begins to walk toward the door, and some part of her is surprised, just like every other time, surprised that when she tells him to go, he turns and goes.

“Kurt?” she calls after him, taking a few steps to follow. She feels sick about leaving it this way now.

He turns back around, no hint of resentment or frustration in his face, and she feels her stomach wrench again at that. He may very well come when she calls and go when she demands forever. The thought that he can bear to go on this way and the thought that he could ever stop are equally agonizing.

“Thank you for being here for me tonight. It means a lot to me.”

He nods and smiles, meeting her gaze just until she fears it might break her, and then mercifully turns away again.

One way or the other, eventually she will have to set them free of this terrible limbo.

“Kurt,” she calls out again, her voice breaking this time.

His hand is on the doorknob when he turns around again, his eyes patient and full of love as always.

“It just can't be about this,” she says fiercely, but doubting her resolve. “If we're going to – it can't be because I'm afraid of what's going to happen.”

“I know,” he says. And if she can take any comfort in what has happened between them at all, it will be in the certainty that he truly does know.

And then he is gone, the click of the lock behind him cold and final.

She walks back to the dining room and sinks into the chair closest at hand, taking in the extent of her devastation laid out in neatly sorted piles before her. She isn't quite sure whether this hurts any more than the last time her life was turned upside down, by the very man who just walked out her door. But one compounded upon the other is almost too much to bear.

She allows herself exactly one minute of pity. Then she stands again, pushing in the chair, and pausing to straighten one pile that had fanned out when she breezed by it before. She returns to the living room, gathering her glass and his, draining the last couple swallows of scotch before placing them in the kitchen sink. She walks back through each room, turning off the lights as she goes. One step at a time. That's how she'll put everything right again.

She walks upstairs, going through the motions of her bedtime routine, the same as every night, no different from the time before her life was torn apart. A strange sort of peace comes over her to know these simple steps in one's daily life – one, then another, then another, until complete – never really change. She washes her face, undresses, unmakes her bed. She slips between the sheets, shutting off the bedside light, shifting onto her side until she is comfortable.

It is that first step, she knows, that she has been stuck on for a year. That terrifying, blind step into trusting him again. The step she comes up to and backs away from every time she gets close to the edge, realizing she could just as easily miss and freefall into nothingness.

She closes her eyes against the empty side of the bed where he should be. There are other things that must be done now before she can even think of that. She has lost everything in a much more fundamental way. But it's very simple, really. All she needs to do is get some sleep. Wake with her alarm. And begin the work of taking her life back – one step at a time.

 


End file.
